"Howard Waldrop - The Sawing Boys" - читать интересную книгу автора (Waldrop Howard)

"Whazzat?" asks Little Willie.
"I spy the blacksmith shop, and I spy the general mercantile establishment to
which the blower wire runs. Here is what we are doing. William and I will saunter
over to the smithy and forge, where we will inquire of aid for the vehicle. Charlie
Perro, you will go make the call which will tender our apologies as being late for the
meet, and get some further instructions. Jacob, you will take the love of my life, Miss
Millie, to this venerable Ma Gooser's eatatorium where we will soon join you in a
prodigious repast."


The general mercantile is in the way of selling everything on god's green earth, and
the aroma is very mouth-watering—it is a mixture of apple candy and nag tack, coal
oil and licorice and flour, roasted coffee and big burlap sacks of nothing in
particular. There is ladies' dresses and guy hats and weapons of all kinds.
There is one phone; it is on the back wall; it is the kind Alexander Graham Bell
made himself.
"Good person," I says to the man behind the counter, who is wearing specs and a
vest and has a tape measure draped over his shoulder, "might I use your telephonic
equipment to make a collect longdistance call?"
"Everthin's long-distance from here," he opines. "Collect, you say?"
"That is being correct."
He goes to the wall and twists a crank and makes bell sounds. "Hello, Gertie. This
is Spoon. How's things in Grinder Switch? You don't say? Well, there's a city
feller here needs to make a collect call. Right. You fix him up." He hands me the
long earpiece, and puts me in the fishwife care of this Gertie, and parks himself
nearby and begins to count some bright glittery objects.
I tells Gertie the number I want. There are these sounds like the towers are falling.
"And what's your name," asks this Gertie.
I gives her the name of this known newspaper guy who hangs out at Chases' and
who writes about life in the Roaring Forties back in the Big City. The party on the
other end will be wise that that is not who it is, but will know I know he knows.
I hear this voice and Gertie gives them my name and they say okay.
"Go ahead," says Gertie.
"We are missing the meet," I says.
"Bleaso!" says the voice. "Eetmay alledoffcay. Ammysays Iseway! Izzyoway and
Oemay erehay."
Itshay I am thinking to myself. To him I says:
"Elltay usoway atwhay otay ooday?"
"Ogay Omehay!"
He gets off the blower.
"I used to have a cousin that could talk Mex," says Spoon at the counter. I thank
him for the use of the phone. "Proud as a peach of it," he says, wiping at it with a
cloth.
"Well, you should be," I tell him. Then I buy two cents worth of candy and put it
in a couple of pockets, and then I ease on down this town's Great White Way.


This Ma Gooser's is some hopping joint. I don't think the griddle here's been
allowed to cool off since the McKinley Administration. Large Jake and Miss Mil-lie
Dee Chantpie are already tucking in. The place is as busy as a chophouse on